


weep not for roads untraveled

by captainhurricane



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternative realities, Angst and Feels, Character Study, M/M, POV Second Person, major character death is mostly just implied
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-18 10:53:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13680231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainhurricane/pseuds/captainhurricane
Summary: Sometimes life ends in tragedy, sometimes it is a tragedy. The one constant is you.





	weep not for roads untraveled

**Author's Note:**

> [listen to this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFiNlLt8sJw)

  You know it by now; that this is not the only world there is. That the struggles you and your fellow Paladins are going through are non-existent in other worlds, other realities- that there is a Keith somewhere who might not even be named Keith. That there is a Keith somewhere who may not have never met Shiro.

Or a Keith who has lost Shiro.

Like you have, so many times you have lost count. Sometimes you have dealt with it, sometimes you have not. He just can’t help but disappear on you, over and over again and when he returns, he returns a little different, feeling so far away from you that you can’t help but think it’s you who has crossed into another reality, who has become some other Keith with another life than yours.

You never tell anyone, much less Shiro, that you know those other Keiths with other lives exist.

You never tell anyone that they exist right out of anyone’s reach, through wormholes and through your nightmares.

You know there is a Keith, another one of you who lost his Shiro to Kerberos and only got back a corpse.

You know there is a Keith, a warrior broken and bitter whose Shiro died in his arms in the early days of a war.

You know there are worlds out there where it’s you who dies: it’s you who rams a ship against a barrier and shatters. It’s you whose death is avenged by your grieving friends.

You try not to think about that too much. Dying for the greater good does scare you because you are still a person with such life in you- but if it means that the universe gets to go on living, with your or without you, is it not worth it?

Sacrificing yourself for the greater good didn’t come to pass in this universe, but you have a feeling it came to pass in others. Maybe it was Shiro in those who held your corpse in his arms and cried. Maybe he never loved you in other worlds, in other realities- maybe there is hope that in at least one he did and wept for you.

You never tell Shiro any of this. In this reality, your world, he’s still the one whose light guides you the best. You’ve loved him since your days together at the Galaxy Garrison, before he went away and returned, changed, to you and you’ve never told him any of that.

Somewhere, out there, after all is a Keith who has and who has his Shiro, bright and whole and alive.

Isn’t that enough?

_(The spark of stardust that you are, you have been a man named Keith before, who once loved a man named Takashi. The same one who went to the stars and never returned and you lived for decades with that in your heart._

_The shard of starlight that you are, another you, somewhere held his Shiro in his arms until death came and took a beloved spirit away. That Keith, that part of you, went on to become cold and closed off his heart forever.)_

You are infinite, boy, and so is your love for the universe. So is your knowledge that there are so many paths your feet could have taken you, there still are. There are infinite ways that your life could go and has gone from the beginning of time. Sometimes you lose the love of your life and die with him. Sometimes you get to grow old with him. Sometimes you never find each other.

There are an infinite number of worlds and realities out there but the one constant is you, in different forms, in different lives, on different paths. You and your starlit soul, you and your love for the light in your life.


End file.
